DeGenaro, Zhao and Yu present at 16th Annual Cornell Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium

Senior linguistics major Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao and junior linguistics major Dan DeGenaro presented talks on April 23, 2022 at the 16th Annual Cornell Undergraduate Linguistics Colloquium.

Fengyue (Lisa) Zhao presents her talk “Probabilistic Listener: A Case of Reflexive *ziji* “self” Ambiguity Resolution in Mandarin” at CULC 16. Here’s her slide showing the math underlying the Rational Speech Act Model.

Dan DeGenaro presents his talk “Examining the Perceived Meaning of African American English Dialect Aspectual Markers” at CULC 16. Here’s his slide on research questions.

Zhao presented her honors thesis work supervised by our faculty member Brian Dillon (with committee member Ming Xiang (University of Chicago)), “Probabilistic Listener: A Case of Reflexive ziji “self” Ambiguity Resolution in Mandarin”. DeGenaro presented ongoing research entitled “Examining the Perceived Meaning of African American English Dialect Aspectual Marker”—work inspired by our faculty member Lisa Green’s Introduction to African American English course and advised by Green.

Faculty member Kristine Yu presented a keynote talk entitled “Tones: where are they all coming from?!” which considered the diversity of ways tones can be introduced in the grammar as a starting point for considering the grammatical source of the seemingly obligatory high tone on remote past stressed “BIN” in African American English. The talk emerged from work on the NSF grant on African American English held by Yu, Green, and colleagues Meghan Armstrong-Abrami and Brendan O’Connor.